Introduction to the Physics and Psychophysics of Music

Book excerpt: Viii book we shall refer a great deal to the discipline of psycho physics, which in a broad sense tries to establish in a quan titative form the causal relationship between the "physical" input from our senses and the psychological sensations and physiological reactions evoked in our mind and body, re spectively. Actually, we shall try to weave a rather close mesh between physics and psychophysics-or, more pre cisely, psychoacoustics. After all, they appear naturally interwoven in music itself: not only pitch, loudness and timbre are a product of physical and psychoacoustical proc esses, but so are the sensations related to consonance and dissonance, tonic dominance, trills and ornamentation, vibrato, phrasing, beats, tone attack, duration and decay, rhythm, and so on. Many books on physics of music or musical acoustics are readily available. An up-to-date text is the treatise of John Backus (1969). No book on psychoacoustics is available at the elementary level, though. Several review articles on pertinent topics can be found in Tobias (1970) and in Plomp and Smoorenburg (1970). A comprehensive discussion is given in Flanagan's book on speech (1972). And, of course, there is the classical treatise of von Bekesy (1960). A com prehensive up-to-date analysis of general brain processes can be found in Sommerhoff (1974); musical psychology is discussed in classical terms in Lundin (1967).